Foraging for Chanterelle Mushrooms in South Louisiana

A good friend of ours has some land just east of our home that is on Bayou Nezpique. Since it sits on the bayou, it is obviously low-lying acreage, but the land has a gradual rise and a heavily wooded property thickly populated with old growth oak, cypress, tupelo gum trees and palmetto.  It just so happens that it is a perfect area for chanterelle mushrooms!  Our friend allows us to go foraging for mushrooms on his land and we happened to go out earlier this week on our first foray for chanterelles. The friend is part of a mycological society and is knowledgeable on what to look for and was eager to pass along some knowledge.

Honestly, mushrooms always have scared me as some are indeed deadly, but our friend taught us to just be able to positively identify the two main edible mushrooms that grow in our area - Chanterelles and Oyster Mushrooms.  Today we'll show you how we foraged for chanterelles.  We drove the short 5 minute drive to his land and arrived around 7:30 pm after the milking was done and things had started to cool off a little.  We had to rush since the sun was quickly going down.  Since we were walking in the woods under a thick canopy of leaves, it was dark, so please forgive the quality of my pictures.

We first made sure to wear boots as there are snakes in the area.  We also each broke off a stick and waved it in front of us as we walked as Banana spiders weave huge webs that I don't want to walk into and certainly don't want one of those big fellas to fall on me.  There are numerous wild hogs out there and we crossed trails that they had made through the undergrowth.  Russ chased an armadillo that was rooting around for grubs.  We also heard owls hooting.  Tricia wasn't particularly thrilled to be trekking through the woods with all these critters, but she's a trooper and stuck with it.

I guess the first thing that amazed me is the fact that we have delicacies all around us that we literally walk past every day without realizing the worth.  I've spent lots of time in the woods and have seen chanterelles and walked right past them or maybe even kicked them over.  All that changed today.  I'll not walk past them again.  It didn't take long before we spotted some!

Chanterelles!

Chanterelles grow in the dirt - never in wood, so you should walk around slowly, with your eyes sweeping the forest floor.  (Good protection against stepping on snakes, too.)  The chanterelles range in color from light yellow to orange and rather than having a toadstool appearance, they are fluted, having a trumpet shape. You can also see on the ground an unripe, green muscadine that has fallen out of the tree.  These wild grapes grow like crazy out here and I assume squirrels or birds have knocked them off the vine prematurely. Chanterelles most often appear from July - September and normally right after a rain, so we are in the prime season for them.

Chanterelle and muscadines

Mushrooms are a fungi and we learned that the mushroom itself is the "fruit."  The actual fruit is produced by the mycelium.  The mycelium is the vegetative part of the fungi that is like tiny threads, or roots that you can't see.  So what you want to do when you see one is to cut it instead of pulling it so that you leave the mycelium intact to grow more.  Also, when you see one, look around closely, because there will be more, hiding under leaves.  You want to be real careful to not step on them or compact the soil.  Remember where you found them and check back in a few weeks for more.  Below is a most beautiful chanterelle and is exactly the color of homemade butter made from grass-fed Jersey cows on new growth grass in Springtime!

Just like Butter!

The best way to store mushrooms is in a paper bag.  If you store them in plastic they won't be able to breathe.  When we got home, we took showers to get rid of the itching from the mosquito bites and spider webs in our hair and we opened the bag to admire our harvest.

Bag of goodies!

We weighed them and found that we had picked right over a pound of chanterelles.  A quick search showed the market value of chanterelles being anywhere between $26 - $40 per pound.  I assume that the price for them is so high because they are very hard to cultivate and are most often just found in the wild.  We're not going to try to sell any of these though.  We're gonna eat them!

A little over a pound

And here are the spoils of victory from our first forage for Chanterelle mushrooms all laid out on the counter:

Admiring our golden treasure.

You can see the trumpet shape of the chanterelle below:

And here is a very good illustration of another identifying mark of a chanterelle - they don't have gills like other mushrooms.  They have wrinkles instead, or ridges.  I'm told that chanterelles have a fruity fragrance, like that of apricots, but my sense of smell must be lacking as I only pick up an "earthy" scent.

Wrinkles of the chanterelle

And here are a couple of twin chanterelles, promising to be double good.

We brushed these off to clean them up and then we'll saute them in a cast iron skillet with some butter, sea salt and a splash of red wine.

Into the skillet

And they'll nicely pair with some pot roast with new potatoes, rice & gravy, sauerkraut and gingered carrots.

Supper time

Here's a close-up of some nice sauteed chanterelle mushrooms, just picked from the forest floor just west of the Bayou Nezpique:

Chanterelles for supper

These were simply delicious!  We also cook them with pasta and fresh vegetables, and I'm thinking they'll be outstanding in an omelet made with fresh picked eggs from our hens. In summary, we learned a lot and found a real 'honey hole' full of nice chanterelles that will provide us a few good meals that we will savor and enjoy. We also forage for Oyster Mushrooms in our area.  Check out THIS POST to see how we harvest the oysters.